HUNTING IN AFRICA 121 



I have seen, myself, a bear, shot at from that foolish 

 position, almost run over two good men, who in their hurry 

 to get out of his way, missed him clean, and were them- 

 selves in danger for a moment. 



I have also known of a soldier of the Fifth Infantry, 

 an excellent shot, killed by a small bear in a plum thicket, 

 into which he had the temerity to follow the beast, after 

 wounding him with his Springfield rifle. 



I have seen a three-quarters grown grizzly charge savagely 

 after being shot through the body, when he had been 

 followed into a corner of the rocks, from which he could 

 in no way retreat. 



But none of these instances, nor yet hundreds more 

 like them, which anyone who had hunted successfully in 

 our mountains for years could supply, invalidates my con- 

 tentions; that whatever sort of an opponent the great gray 

 bear may have been a hundred years ago, he is to-day, and 

 he has been for many years, an exceedingly timid animal. 



He falls to the slightest wound. I have seen one fall, 

 making a terrible outcry, and roll fully fifty yards down 

 hill, to a shot that only slightly wounded one of his fore 

 paws. When, still roaring, he rolled almost up against 

 me, his sudden dismay was ludicrous. He gathered him- 

 self up from the ground in an instant, and went off at a 

 great pace till shot. My hunter, Frank Chatfield, who 

 was with me in my annual hunt for many years, a splendid 

 shot, had killed before his death, more than a hundred 

 grizzlies. He told me he never knew a grizzly to charge 

 home. Very rarely he would rush forward on receiving 

 his wound (he did not probably see his enemy) and also 

 very occasionally before "clearing," he would stand up 

 straight and growl, giving any man with ordinary nerve, 

 all the chance he wanted, to shoot him dead. But charge 

 in, he never did. I have shot, in the old days, twenty-five, 

 I never saw one charge. 



